Although speech recognition has been around for decades, the quality of speech recognition software and hardware has only recently reached a high enough level to appeal to a large number of consumers. One area in which speech recognition has become very popular in recent years is the smartphone and tablet computer industry. Using a speech recognition-enabled device, a consumer can perform such tasks as making phone calls, writing emails, and navigating with GPS, strictly by voice.
Speech recognition in such devices is far from perfect, however. When using a speech recognition-enabled device for the first time, the user may need to “train” the speech recognition software to recognize his or her voice. For voice training of a voice recognition system to be successful, the user should be in an environment that meets certain levels of criteria. For example, background noise levels during the recording of a voice training sample should be within an acceptable range.